Tribesmen

This week’s Allegiance challenge is to celebrate your boss. This will go a long way towards helping them know that you’ve got their back and you’re on their team.

The people in authority over us often lead in ways that go unthanked and unnoticed. Sometimes the best way to show your allegiance is simply to celebrate the person you’re giving it to.

Write a card, throw a party, send a singing telegram. It doesn’t matter. Just do something that would be fun and meaningful for your boss. And be sure to point out the things you appreciate about them.

Find a partner from your team at work to do this with, or just ask a buddy to hold you accountable to getting it done. And then jump in our Facebook group and tell us all about it. We’d love to celebrate with you!

About Manhood Challenges

Manhood Challenges are designed to help you get better at being a man in 1 of our 5 Marks of Manhood. We’ll have a new challenge for you each Friday, but you should focus on doing the ones that are actually a challenge for you.

Remember to partner with a friend, either to do the challenge together, or to hold you accountable to completing it. A manhood challenge isn’t complete unless you have a partner.

You can find more Manhood Challenges on our website:

• Strength
• Courage
• Skill
• Honor
• Allegiance

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

This week, we’re continuing our series about Jesus. But we’re talking about Jesus as you’ve never heard it before. Not all the wispy religious platitudes you may have heard. 

We’re talking about Jesus, the man. Specifically, we want you to see Jesus as the man most worthy of following.

Today we’re discussing how we think Jesus had skills. As one of our 5 Marks of Manhood, skill is something that every man should possess. Jesus is no different.

But thinking of Jesus as skilled isn’t something most of us struggle with. Accepting that he had to learn his skills might be. It’s tempting to think that Jesus just sort of showed up on the scene as an expert on everything. He is God after all.

The Bible is clear that he had to learn, just like every other man has to learn (Luke 2). Just like his earthly father, he learned the skills of a carpenter. And from a young age, he learned to become a teacher - a master teacher whose teaching we’re still talking about 2000 years later. Jesus’s teaching, like the stories of the prodigal son (Luke 15) and the good Samaritan (Luke 10), continue to change people’s lives.

If you want to learn what it means to work at your skills as a man, and then to offer those skills in a way that benefits others, take a look at Jesus. He is truly a master craftsman.

Call To Action!

Subscribe to the podcast through your podcast player, and then share your favorite episode with a friend. Think of a man who could benefit from hearing the Tribesmen Podcast, and then pass it along!

And don’t forget to donate to the podcast, to help us cover the expenses of creating great content for you!

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

This week’s Skill challenge is to visit a master craftsman. What better way to learn or improve a skill, than to visit an expert?

Pick a craft that you’d love to learn, or learn more about. Blacksmithing, carpentry, baking, pottery, handwriting. It doesn’t matter the craft. Just find someone who’s a master at it, and ask to visit them in their element.

Set up a time to watch them at their work, and let them know you’d like to ask them some questions. We’ve created some starter questions for you over in our Facebook group. Your goal is to learn some things about how they’ve grown in their craft over time, and what’s helped them to stay the course.

Plan your visit, and find another man to go with you. You’ll develop great camaraderie through this shared experience. Tell us about your visit and post some pics in our Facebook group!

About Manhood Challenges

Manhood Challenges are designed to help you get better at being a man in 1 of our 5 Marks of Manhood. We’ll have a new challenge for you each Friday, but you should focus on doing the ones that are actually a challenge for you.

Remember to partner with a friend, either to do the challenge together, or to hold you accountable to completing it. A manhood challenge isn’t complete unless you have a partner.

You can find more Manhood Challenges on our website:

• Strength
• Courage
• Skill
• Honor
• Allegiance

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

This week we’re beginning a new series about Jesus. But we’re talking about Jesus as you’ve never heard it before. Not all the wispy religious platitudes you may have heard. 

We’re talking about Jesus, the man. Specifically, we want you to see Jesus as the man most worthy of following.

Today we’re discussing how we think Jesus had guts, which has to be one of the manliest attributes we think of in our favorite characters from stories and film.

Jesus shows off his gutsiness when he picks a verbal fight with the religious leaders of his day (John 8). He throws all kinds of verbal insults at them. But he does it in defense of the people he’s come to save. His words take courage and honor.

Again, he is bold when he enters the Jewish temple during the last week of his life (Luke 19). Jesus causes what we consider a small riot. He violently drives people out of the temple, in defense of God, his Father. Again, he shows his courage and honor, as well as his allegiance.

Is this the Jesus you know? A man capable of anger and violence? He might be different than you’ve imagined him. If you want to be a man with guts, you should take a closer look at Jesus.

Call To Action!

Leave us a rating and review through Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast host. This will help other people find the podcast. Let people know what your favorite recent episode is, so they know where to jump in.

And don’t forget to donate to the podcast, to help us cover the expenses of creating great content for you!

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

This week’s Courage challenge is to do something physical you’re not good at. Facing a fear or weakness is the essence of courage, and that’s what this challenge is all about

We think it should be something physical, because honestly for most men this is a little easier than something emotional or spiritual. Maybe you’re not a good swimmer, and you need to get in the pool and do a few laps. Maybe you’re uncomfortable in nature, so you need to go for a hike. Maybe you never learned to throw a football well, and you need a buddy to help you work on it.

As men, we all have areas of inadequacy that we hide from. This is your opportunity to confront one of those areas and change it. Don’t let it be something that continues to cause you to hide!

Decide what you’re going to work on, and find another man to help you with it. Post pictures of your progress in our Facebook group and let us know how it’s going!

About Manhood Challenges

Manhood Challenges are designed to help you get better at being a man in 1 of our 5 Marks of Manhood. We’ll have a new challenge for you each Friday, but you should focus on doing the ones that are actually a challenge for you.

Remember to partner with a friend, either to do the challenge together, or to hold you accountable to completing it. A manhood challenge isn’t complete unless you have a partner.

You can find more Manhood Challenges on our website:

• Strength
• Courage
• Skill
• Honor
• Allegiance

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

Today we wrap up our series The Story You’re Living In. We’ve been talking about the ideas that can be so big that they provide enough context for us to order most of our lives around. We can get caught up in them, to the point that they become the driving force for most of our time, thought, and decision making.

Each of these big ideas has common story elements. We believe that if a story has these elements, it can become the type of story we get caught up in. Those 4 story elements are:

• Good in the world
• A villain who comes to corrupt/destroy the good
• A hero who sacrifices/triumphs to rescue the good
• Restoration of the good

So far in this series, we’ve said every idea we’ve looked at isn’t worthy of our allegiance. This week, we talk about a story that is. It’s the story of the Kingdom of God.

This is the original story--the one that the common story elements are derived from. The reason that we get caught up in all the other stories is because they resemble this story.

At the center of the story is Jesus. As the hero, he sacrifices himself for us so that we, as the good in the world, might be restored. And then he sets us free to do the same for others.

Whether or not this is the story you’re living in, we urge you to consider it with fresh eyes and ears. We believe it is the only story truly worthy of our allegiance. And as Tribesmen, this story will shape everything about the way we relate to each other as men.

Call To Action!

Sign up for the Tribesmen email list to get reminders about podcast episode releases, and to stay up to date with all our Tribesmen news. To sign up, just fill out the pop-up form on our website homepage.

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

This week’s Strength challenge is to make progress on the monkey bars. The monkey bars are a great test of grip strength, back strength, and stamina.

Figure out where you’re starting from and make progress from there. If you can’t cross any bars, work on doing a dead hang for as long as you can. This will help develop your grip and back strength. Then move on to a two-handed pass, and then a one-handed pass across the bars.

For more advanced moves, work on swinging by skipping a bar between each pass. You might add a pull-up or a one-handed hang between each pass for an added challenge.

Work on this challenge 2x/week, and make as much progress as you can in 1 month. Post pictures of your progress in our Facebook group and let us know how it’s going!

About Manhood Challenges

Manhood Challenges are designed to help you get better at being a man in 1 of our 5 Marks of Manhood. We’ll have a new challenge for you each Friday, but you should focus on doing the ones that are actually a challenge for you.

Remember to partner with a friend, either to do the challenge together, or to hold you accountable to completing it. A manhood challenge isn’t complete unless you have a partner.

You can find more Manhood Challenges on our website:

• Strength
• Courage
• Skill
• Honor
• Allegiance

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

Porn is the next big area we discuss as we continue our series The Story You’re Living In. These ideas can be so big, in fact, that they provide enough context for us to order most of our lives around. We can get caught up in them, to the point that they become the driving force for most of our time, thought, and decision making.

We’re examining each of these big ideas by looking at common story elements that each of them possesses. We believe that if a story has these elements, it can become the type of story we get caught up in. Those 4 story elements are:

• Good in the world
• A villain who comes to corrupt/destroy the good
• A hero who sacrifices/triumphs to rescue the good
• Restoration of the good

This week, we talk about how for many men, porn has become the story you’re living in. In the internet age, porn is everywhere. And the statistics of porn use among men are staggering. The lustful allure of sex is nothing new in our age. But combining that with free, unlimited, and anonymous access has created a perfect storm for porn to overwhelm us.

Porn becomes such a powerful story because it promises to eliminate any villain. At least for a while. But to keep those benefits, you have to keep returning to the porn. Hence the tendency of many men toward porn addiction. It never satisfies and never brings lasting good to anyone.

If porn has become the story you’re living in, we recommend a few things:

• Be honest and talk about it with another man in your life
• Figure out what you’re using porn to medicate
• Get help, because you won’t get free alone

Call To Action!

If porn is a challenge for you, consider signing up for Covenant Eyes. CE is an internet accountability software that tracks your web usage and reports it to accountability partners whom you select. It won’t solve your porn problems. But it will help foster the kind of honest conversations you need with other men in order to get free.

You can sign up for Covenant Eyes through our website at tribesmen.net/resources. (This will take you to an affiliate link, which means if you sign up through us, we will get a financial benefit as well.)

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

This week’s Allegiance challenge is to ask yourself what voices you’re listening to. Maybe that’s key figures in your life, like your boss, your wife, your pastor. Maybe it’s through the media, like a political pundit or social influencer. It could be God, the American dream, or any number of other things.

But whoever or whatever you’re listening to is likely vying for your allegiance. And figuring out where you’re giving your allegiance requires figuring out who you’re listening to.

To help you think through it, we’ve posted some questions in our Facebook group that you can use to ask yourself. Post what you come up with, and let us know if this is where you want your allegiance to be or not.

Remember to partner with a friend, either to do the challenge together, or to hold you accountable to completing it. A manhood challenge isn’t complete unless you have a partner.

Manhood Challenges are designed to help you get better at being a man in 1 of our 5 Marks of Manhood. We’ll have a new challenge for you each Friday, but you should focus on doing the ones that are actually a challenge for you.

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)

Kids are the next big area we discuss as we continue our series The Story You’re Living In. These ideas can be so big, in fact, that they provide enough context for us to order most of our lives around. We can get caught up in them, to the point that they become the driving force for most of our time, thought, and decision making.

We’re examining each of these big ideas by looking at common story elements that each of them possesses. We believe that if a story has these elements, it can become the type of story we get caught up in. Those 4 story elements are:

• Good in the world
• A villain who comes to corrupt/destroy the good
• A hero who sacrifices/triumphs to rescue the good
• Restoration of the good

This week, we talk about how our kids’ activities can become the story you’re living in. The hours spent shuttling back and forth to practices. The money spent on lessons and equipment. The sacrifices to family time for the sake of tournaments and performances. Our kids’ lives can very quickly overwhelm our own.

Our kids become the story we’re living in, because we often see the potential for good in their future before they do. And we will stop at almost nothing to make sure they don’t miss out on that preferred future. Even if they don’t see it, we hope that the good it will provide them will be worth it in the end. We hope.

If your kids’ activities have taken over your family, we’ve got some tips for you on how to rein things back in.

• Be honest with your kids that you’re doing too much
• Set a healthy activity limit with them
• Have more seasons with no activity, than seasons with activity.

Call To Action!

We know you love the Tribesmen Podcast so much, you never want to miss an episode! That’s why you should SUBSCRIBE to the podcast. You can do that through your podcast player, or through the embedded player on each episode’s page on our website.

We’d also love it if you SHARE an episode of the podcast with a friend. If you’ve received benefit from the podcast, the best way to pay it forward is by helping other men find out about us. You can share directly from your podcast player, or by sharing the episode posts in our Facebook group.

Support the show (https://tribesmen.net/donate)